First Poll Survey Shows Rapid Preparation for a Digital-Driven Future
- By Winston Thomas
- August 08, 2022
Doom and gloom may punctuate the current atmosphere, but our inaugural poll of 87 chief digital and data leaders remain cautiously optimistic.
While the study was not meant to be exhaustive, it offered a quick look at what’s driving digital and data investment decisions. It also unearthed some interesting trends.
Digital and data maturity
While many may see Asia Retail as digitally mature, the poll survey noted that many companies from other industries are still at the early stages of their digital journeys.
30% said they were at the early stages of implementing their digital strategy. In contrast, only 3.5% said they were at a late stage.
Companies are also pivoting or adjusting to a challenging market environment. 18.5% noted that they were recalibrating and realigning their current strategies. 15% were expanding their digitalization efforts with a companywide roadmap, while 9% were still at the conceptual stage and assessing internal capabilities.
The results show that the potential for Asian digitalization is high and, in many areas, only starting. Digital and data leaders were focusing more on strategy and implementation than operational matters like recruiting the right talent (8%).
It’s a similar story for data. 20% said they were preparing data and defining workflows through dataops and data engineering, while 15% were exploring new data structures like data meshes, data fabric, and data lakehouses. The latter result may point to shortcomings or challenges in managing data lakes and data warehouses together.
But in data and unlike in digital, talent and culture matter more. 14% noted that creating a data culture was as important as identifying suitable business use cases (both 14%). 11.5% are still struggling to communicate to stakeholders.
Where it gets interesting is what was missing. Practicing or enforcing data governance wasn't selected at all. The result may indicate that many companies are at the early stages of their data journeys and may be vulnerable to inherent bias or model drifts. Or it may be that this was not their immediate concern (even though it should be). Whatever the reason, it’s something that warrants further investigation and introspection.
Top focus areas
Regarding the type of projects these respondents focused on, cloud/infrastructure (31%) and data science (28.5%) came out on top.
Security was still a significant worry, with data security and data privacy coming at a close third (27.5%). CX or digital experience initiatives and workforce/collaboration projects were less of a focus for many (26.5% and 24%, respectively).
Interestingly, dataops (20.5%) and AI (17%) were not the top focus areas. This is despite respondents having the latitude in selecting all the focus areas that applied to them.
Digging deeper into AI projects (a popular theme across Asia) uncovered significant struggles. 36.5% said they were still exploring AI business cases, while 19% were exploring efficiency with AI.
Among the various xOps related to AI, AIOps was a significant focus area for 16.5% of respondents. This is aligned with the previous result of exploring efficiency. An equal percentage were also examining ModelOps and MLOps.
What is clear is that many companies see their future with AI. But many are looking for immediate wins with efficiency gains. Still, 13% indicated they were having challenges getting the proper buy-in, which could indicate issues in identifying the correct use case or operationalizing AI.
Internal talent and management support
Talent is a major hot-button issue for companies. With the lack of technology talent in the market and only now universities ramping up STREAM studies, the survey showed that companies are choosing to look internal.
34.5% said that they were rolling out in-house training courses for re-skilling and upskilling for data science. The question, which allowed respondents to choose all ways in which they are using to closing the talent gap, also saw external education as the second route for skill development (27.5%).
At the same time, 24% said that their companies are democratizing data and rolling out data tools for all their employees. An equal percentage is also shifting from reports to data-driven decisions. Regarding creativity, only 12.5% said they were exploring rewards or running competitions to encourage data implementation ideation.
While companies are at the early stages, top management support remains a concern. 25.5% said they had fair support as long as they aligned closely to solid financial fundamentals, while 24% cited strong support but the need for strong business cases.
However, a significant number are also failing to get the support they need for digital or data projects that shape the entire business. 10.5% felt they had weak support from the top management and required constant justification, while an equal percentage said they had no support.
Budgets
Despite the lackluster top management support and companies having difficulties attracting talent, one area that highlights optimism is budget. And, it’s increasing.
Something that I know the vendor community will take note of, 47% said they currently expected the budgets to remain the same with an increase of not more than 10%. It says a lot with significant headwinds, inflationary pressures facing companies, and recession looming like a dark cloud on the horizon.
What’s more encouraging is that more than a quarter (27%) said they would see an increase of 25 to 50% in their budgets. Another 17.5% added that the increase would be more than 50%. Only 8.5% will see their digital and data budgets cut.
The forecast is decidedly optimistic. 40.5% said they would see a 20 to 50% increase in budgets, while 32.5% said they would see more than a 50% increase. Only 2.5% felt their budgets would be cut, and 24.5% believed the current budgets would remain with only marginal increases.
The shift toward optimism could indicate that many companies are in wait-and-see mode as they roll out their digital initiatives. It could also highlight short-term pressures, but there is a general appreciation of the importance of digital and data for their future outlooks.
Future focus areas
So, where will companies put their budget increases to work? That was the last question we asked in the poll and allowed respondents the freedom to choose all the choices that apply.
The top future focus areas shifted somewhat to data science (31.5%), customer or digital experience (30%), and data security or data privacy (28%). The current top area (infrastructure/cloud) was tied to data security at third.
This slight shift may point to a maturing cloud infrastructure market where many companies will have migrated to some kind of cloud platform or started using a plethora of SaaS packages.
Interestingly, AI and dataops came in fifth and sixth at 23.% and 17.5%, respectively. It shows companies are looking to shore up their data science abilities instead of jumping head first into AI projects or building their dataops teams.
Workforce and collaboration came in last 11.5%, showing that many companies are shifting their focus away from areas of concern at the start of the pandemic. However, the still significant interest in this area also shows that respondents still see the need to improve their collaboration capabilities as they move toward a hybrid form of working.
Conclusion
This snap poll survey aims to gather insights from a sliver of our reader database. However, the results paint an interesting picture of where we are and where the region is heading.
Many companies are shifting from cloud migration and focusing on data science projects. They are also not going at it blindfolded.
Many see challenges in talent and are looking internal. Many respondents also feel that their top management could support them better.
But in one area — budgeting — the stars are aligned. The strong predictions of budgetary increases hint that most companies see their future in digital and data, while not necessarily in AI or machine learning yet.
How this climate of cautious optimism will prevail against macroeconomic pressures, quick rate increases to tame inflation, bristling superpowers, and the winds of recession riding the coattails of a strong USD remains to be seen.
Winston Thomas is the editor-in-chief of CDOTrends and DigitalWorkforceTrends. He’s a singularity believer, a blockchain enthusiast, and believes we already live in a metaverse. You can reach him at [email protected].
Image credit: iStockphoto/SiberianArt
Winston Thomas
Winston Thomas is the editor-in-chief of CDOTrends. He likes to piece together the weird and wondering tech puzzle for readers and identify groundbreaking business models led by tech while waiting for the singularity.